


Separation is an Illusion

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: Cloud Atlas (2012), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Bond disapproves of destiny, M/M, Q isn't sure he disagrees, References to Canonical Character Death, References to Suicide, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 22:50:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/715977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It constantly returns to the same question: is he, Q, the same man who penned those letters and these notes eighty years ago? Or, to put it another way, was Robert Frobisher the same man who has become MI6’s latest head of Q Branch?</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>(If they’re the same then the order of the question hardly matters. That’s the beauty of an equals sign.)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Separation is an Illusion

**Author's Note:**

> A fragment within a fairly large Skyfall/Cloud Atlas headcanon of mine, which unexpectedly expanded into something which could stand on its own if necessary. Quotes in italics are all from the same segment of 'Cloud Atlas', in full at the end.

Q has never been one to think about shots at forever – at least, not with regard to love. (‘Love’. Such a strong word. Four letters yet somehow enough to drive human culture and creation for millennia, to the point where it’s almost impossible to find a song or a story without it. Silly, really. Human experience is about so much more, and all of that keeps being lost in a daydream.)

He understands the kind of immortality that Frobisher clearly pictures, even if he rarely states it explicitly in his letters: creating something which will survive long after you. Take the Sextet as the perfect example: Vyvyan and the world might have done their damnedest to ensure its disappearance into obscurity, and yet here he was, eight decades on, listening to that distinctive (familiar) motif spin its cocoon within his flat’s four walls. Technology never stops moving, and Q isn’t arrogant enough to think that in a hundred years people will still be using his devices (God, he hopes not, the world is made for changing and technology even more so), but perhaps there will still be echoes of his keystrokes, DNA within the design, and he supposes a name in the history books wouldn’t go amiss – even if he’s not sure which name they’d use.

That’s easy, though. That’s human endeavour.

If he’s right about all of this, then he is dealing with something far more treacherous: human emotion. Beyond that, even, because there are traces here of the soul, and he doesn’t even believe in that. 

It constantly returns to the same question: is he, Q, the same man who penned those letters and these notes eighty years ago? Or, to put it another way, was Robert Frobisher the same man who has become MI6’s latest head of Q Branch?

(If they’re the same then the order of the question hardly matters. That’s the beauty of an equals sign.)

That question had been more than sufficient for him to ponder. Indeed, should he so wish, he could spend the rest of his life tossing it back and forth.

Only now there is a new factor to consider. Bad enough to consider one soul; far worse to consider two. Two, and the concept of something else that might be carried over time.

Bond always complicates things, Q reflects, and catches himself smiling at the thought.

_Moments like this, I can feel your heart beating as clearly as I feel my own, and I know that separation is an illusion._

Q hardly thinks that this was the sort of boundary Frobisher had in mind, when he penned those words to a lover he would never speak to again. But perhaps he’s wrong; perhaps he shouldn’t assume, if only because to do so would be to say for certain that they are one and the same. After all, he’s not so certain of that fact.

He can’t forget, no matter how hard he tries, Eve’s exact expression as she asked, “You mean you never wondered who Sixsmith was?” The symphony of emotions – Frobisher’s language, not his – as he shrugged, pulled up the data, dismissed it as a life long gone from the world. At the prospect of something as fantastical as reincarnation, he’d seen no reason to progress past a tendency towards egocentricity.

“I knew you wouldn’t look for me.”

Carefully chosen language, of course. Bond had admitted to some shared memories, but nothing more concrete. In fact, he’d rather undermined himself, since otherwise he was so adamant that he was an entirely different individual to he who had received so many letters from afar with so much assumed intimacy.

It’s the sort of thing that can’t be learned – at least, not as pure theory. It’s the meaning behind those stories and songs, aspired to but impossible to describe. Q should know: he’s been over these letters time and again, yet all he can find is language, with only the echo of the emotion beneath and in the back of his mind.

You can’t learn to love somebody this way; yet nor can you remain indifferent. It leaves you stranded, blind to the way forward and unable to turn back.

Bond had the right idea in choosing to stay silent, even if it was for the most typical pigheaded reasons of stubbornness. It’s a mess, with too much uncertainty for Q to ever feel comfortable. Bad enough to make him question himself without forcing him to consider others within the revised cosmology.

The violins swell, the rest of the orchestra have their moments, but Q can rarely hear anything but that motif winding its way through. Some days, he almost thinks he knows what Frobisher felt as he heard it in his mind. He’s more than familiar with the idea trying to achieve reality: fantasy fighting to become flesh. Code isn’t music, except it is, infinitely more complex and beautiful than he could ever describe.

_Wish I could make you see this brightness._

He thinks of Bond’s smile as he heard an explanation he would never understand of Q’s latest project, and the dream of a memory of his own fingers dancing through the air as he hums and twists his hair in frustration and the same smile, always the same, never interfering but calming nonetheless. His centre; his focus.

“Forty years on and you were still the best thing that ever happened to him.”

Pronouns are almost as bad as names.

“I am not bloody waiting for you, because I am not him: not everything is about you, you arrogant self-centred twat. If we were them, then we’re not any more: destiny is for children, same as love, and if you think about either with regard to us, I will bloody well punch you in the throat.”

A 00’s poetry. Sixsmith was practical as well, Q thinks – he doesn’t know, because he isn’t Frobisher enough to remember the details, but he has these inklings when he listens to this music.

“He heard him shoot himself; found him in the bathtub while he was still warm. That’s your idea of true love, is it?”

The record ends. He sends it back to the beginning, despite knowing every note when he first heard it.

If he were the poetic sort, and thus inclined to such thoughts, he might reflect on the metaphorical relationship between the repetitions occupying his mind and his instincts. 

But Q lives in a binary world, and his poetry is hardly the sort which translates well. 

_All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so._

If he were inclined towards thoughts of destiny and other things cosmic, he might reflect on the various languages of art to which he finds himself drawn; the skills creating something beautiful with perhaps crude tools. Anybody can learn to whistle; anybody can learn to type. It’s that indefinable feeling – the grandness – behind it which identifies the composer or the quartermaster.

Explaining is always nigh-on impossible. It’s rare enough to find somebody who can at least appreciate your passion; who’ll listen, even if they don’t understand. Somebody to whom you can babble your theories concerning boundaries, or rewriting the laws of the cybernetic world, knowing that the laughter isn’t mocking and the real feeling can always be found behind those blue eyes.

_My life extends far beyond the limitations of me._

Perhaps across time, even; beyond two miniscule lives and again, and again, and different people meeting in an art gallery with different words and different faces and different minds, yet still finding each other, and even if nothing can possibly be the same because time is good at nothing if not changing everything – for better, for worse – even then, you are the artist and he is your centre, or he is the agent and you are his inspiration, or neither of you need each other but you will never stop wanting, because it has been so very long, and when it comes to lives, yours are so much better together.

_And all becomes clear._

**Author's Note:**

>  _And all becomes clear. Wish I could make you see this brightness. Don’t worry, all is well. All is so perfectly, damnably well. I understand now, that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so. Moments like this, I can feel your heart beating as clearly as I feel my own, and I know that separation is an illusion. My life extends far beyond the limitations of me._ \- Robert Frobisher, _Cloud Atlas_ , David Mitchell


End file.
